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ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Welcome to This Being Human. I’m your host Abdul-Rehman Malik. On this podcast, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world whose life, ideas and art are shaped by Muslim culture.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

You’re woman, you’re doctor. No one will disturb you. When you try to create a system, that’s when you’re going to have a problem.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

To understand today’s guest, you first have to know her mother – Dr. Hawa Abdi. Glamour Magazine once referred to Dr. Adbi as equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo. Dr. Abdi was the first female gynecologist in Somalia. In the early 1980s, she opened up a rural women’s clinic on her ancestral land outside Mogadishu. Over time, it grew into a 400-bed hospital.

 

When the civil war broke out in the 1990s, displaced people started going to her land to find safety. Before long, what started as a sanctuary basically became its own society, providing not just healthcare, but also education, food and hope for a peaceful future. She called it Hope Village. By the year 2012, Hope Village claimed 90,000 residents. Dr Abdi had survived standoffs with hostile militias. And she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Her two daughters pitched in from an early age, helping to provide care and to keep the village running. Together, the three of them have been dubbed “The Saints of Somalia.” One of those remarkable daughters is Dr. Deqo Mohamed. Dr. Hawa Abdi died in 2020 and along with her sister Amina, Deqo became the inheritor of their mother’s world changing legacy. I wanted to talk to Deqo about growing up in that incredible household, that incredible environment, what drove her mother to do the work she did, and what it’s been like to try to fill such enormous shoes.

 

I spoke to Dr. Deqo from her home in Somaliland.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Oh, Deqo. Where to start? Ever since I had the privilege of meeting you a few years ago, I always felt like your mother was present with you wherever you went, as you were advocating and speaking and organizing and inspiring. She might not have been there physically, but I felt like she was right there next to you. You and her, were these warriors for peace ever together. For someone who might not know your mom, Dr. Hawa Abdi, tell us how we should know her and why she mattered so much.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

I don’t know where to start. She’s a visionary. That’s the main thing. I think that perfectly describes her. She will see the vision and she will move everyone around her to accomplish that vision. So that’s the unique character my mom had, and she never took failure as an option. So it will not work today. She will do all her best to find a reroute, detour, whatever, to get that vision. I quit so many projects. I give up a lot of things, but my mom, she never gave up. And she says, giving up is the failure. It’s not the failing, it’s the failure, it’s just to give up is the failure. And she’s so inspiring.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Did you ever sort of identify what began your mother on this kind of journey and this path? Was there a moment in her early life which kind of shaped this visionary, indefatigable commitment to other human beings, to justice and to serve with love?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

My mom, her mother died in childbirth, on the seventh child. And she took this commitment, I have to be a doctor. I need to save the mothers. And one thing she described, she was young, she was almost 12 going 13, going to like early colonization time. And the Italian was running the hospitals where she passed away. And their white coat and how they’re elegant, how they’re trying to save. She’s like, I need to be a doctor. So, she saw that vision and commitment and she became a doctor.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Being a female doctor in that time and place wasn’t easy. In 1978, a bad work experience changed the course of her life. A patient of hers died, and she was blamed, even though she wasn’t on shift when it happened.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

She was arrested that day. The next day they did an investigation. They figured out she already checked out someone else to cover on the shift and he haven’t followed up properly. Then she goes out from the jail, and she decides to become a lawyer. She’s like, I want to be in justice and make sure and she becomes a lawyer. She takes a post. She gave me birth. She takes a post for another four years than my sister was, she give birth after she graduated from law school. So that’s who my mother is. And her childhood, they didn’t have a home, so all her inheritance were took away from her mother’s family. And her father didn’t have enough money, enough food. They struggled. And when she became a doctor, she said, I’ll buy enough land so no one can take away from me. And that was from Allah’s will. She bought so much land, she rebought all her mother’s inherited land, which later on become this village. And when she was buying all this land, she wasn’t envisioning the country would fall apart and this land will become a haven for millions of people. But she put on her mind, like, I’ll buy that much land like no one will kick me out and my children or my grandchildren will not have a home, they will not be homeless. So that’s how she was committed. She was a doer. She was not a talker. And when you talk and try to explain so many things, she’s like, “You’re wasting your time. Go, let’s do things.”

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

I’ve read elsewhere Deqo that your beloved mother, Dr. Hawa, was was often called and known by the people who were served by her, who engaged with her, who knew her, as Mama Hawa.

 

DEQO MOHAMED: 

Yes.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

She was kind of this motherly figure to tens of thousands… more people. So, I have to ask you, how was it like growing up with a mother like this who you probably sensed very early was “Mama” to a lot of people.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

And we were literally, literally jealous. And we kept telling her, “You love other people than us. You’re always away. You’re not with us.” You know, we never had enough family meals. “You love them more than us.” So that’s when we were rebelling and teenagers. “Oh, go ahead, go to your people. You love them more.”

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Oh, we’re so cruel as teenagers, aren’t we? We’re so– we just throw it right back. What was your mother’s response to that?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

My mom was very open. We had a very democratic house. So she used to push us to talk. And share ideas and everything. But in the final, it will be her words. And then sometimes you get frustrated and you say, “Mom, why are you asking all these questions when it’s going to be all your way?” And she said, “It’s like, I am teaching the process of choosing your ideas.”

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I love that. What a remarkable parenting lesson.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

It was hard. When I grew up, I understood that. But when you’re young, a teenager, it’s very hard. And sometimes she will teach us the process of explaining things in a legal way. And my dad would say, “Oh Dr. Hawa, you never had time to practice your law. And now you’re practicing on your children and your village.” And my mom never practiced the law, she just learned. And every time she comes up with an argument as a lawyer, my dad would say, okay, now she is becoming a lawyer and practicing law. So she was amazing, really. And it was very frustrating to be around her because she was very strong, she was very committed. And sometimes it was hard for her to explain her vision. We just had to follow her.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Right.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

She was always expecting more. Whatever we do, it’s not enough because we have a roof. We never starve. We never lose a house. You will have the list of blessing we have when we try to be, you know, whining. And we say, “Mom, we’re doing too much.” I used to care about the breakfast of thousands of people. My role was making sure everyone get food in the morning.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Wow.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

The afternoon, my job was to make sure this, you know, the stock of the pharmacy it’s in place. If it’s not, if something’s missing, I used to call ICRC, all this organization to make sure we have medical supplies.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

So, you as a teenager were coordinating that?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

15 years old. I was 15 years old when that happened.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

That’s incredible.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

And my mom would say, “That’s nothing. My mom died when I was 12. I took care of all my siblings. You’re not doing anything. Your mom and dad are here. You’re just, what, making a phone call and counting a couple supplies? That is nothing.” She set up a high standard and we had a list of blessing we have, always she used to remind us. “You have food, you have a house, you have the parents. No complaint.”

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Deqo, I know you’ve mentioned elsewhere how you originally had no desire to go into medicine. That, you know, when you’re 15 and 16, and you’re talking to the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and you’re coordinating pharmacies and you’re making sure thousands of people are fed, I could imagine, you know, someone like that saying, Man I’d love a life as a historian or I’d love a life teaching literature. But you didn’t, you didn’t become a historian and you didn’t become a professor of literature. You became a doctor. What was that turning point for you where the work that you were experiencing in your home under the leadership of your mother, you decided to make that your calling?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

I think I knew my mom would push me to become a doctor. So I love to be historian, academic when I was even in high school. So I was like beginning of my high school years, I said, “Mom, I don’t want to be a doctor.” And she said, “Make sure you get your assignments, grades well. A+. You’re going to medical school.” And I said, “No, I don’t.” So that’s the conversation we had.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

But Deqo did end up in medical school. She got her degree in Russia and did a postgraduate program in the United States. And through those years, she learned a lot about herself.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

I learned I’m a traveler. I enjoy being around people. I love the world. I love what I do. And looking back, the work my mom did and doing and what I did was like, that’s where I belong to.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

You know, the Hope Village, which your mother created has been spoken about and celebrated all over the world, even earned her a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. If I was to walk into the Hope Village at its peak, what would it have looked like?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

Oh, you will wake up with the busy, overcrowded villages. Small village where… has so much like a government. When I walked back in 2007, I told my mom, This is a whole government. Because we have a small cafe, we have the school, we have the storage where is a jail. In the same time we have a couple of trees where is the committee and town hall, where elderly will sit and discuss the issue. It’s a whole ecosystem she created not even thinking about it. And the beauty of her law degree and her vision, she appointed everyone somewhere and it’s like, Mom, you have all ministers and deputies and and you know, directors and everything. And they just the committee and they part of community. And you have young people who are passionate, taking care of the safety of the village and making sure if someone new comes in, what they doing, how they doing. And the beauty of everyone following. And I ask my mom like, how this happened? You know. For me, ten years being in Russia, five years in the U.S. helped me to understand and see my own village differently, because I was away so much, when I came back, the system’s in place. “Mom, how did this happen?” And she’s like, “Oh clan and clan elderly are insurers.” So here they have housing, they have a water, they have the health care. They have education. They don’t need to be dependent on a clan or a clan elderly or a group of people who will abuse them, their power.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

What a remarkable picture you paint. There must have been those who didn’t want the village to exist, right?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

Absolutely. That’s why we had to relocate people. We had to move. We had to go bigger because Al-Shabaab attacked us eight times. They cut half of the land. They had excuse because you all women running. We struggled for the last 15 years before even my mom died, until last years of my mom’s death, which is very sad to me. And it’s a whole country. The other thing on top of all that, my mom is beloved and a mother to a lot of nation, but in a clan division and classes are rooted in our community. And my mom was not in a strong clan. She was in minority. And she achieved all that because of hard work. And she will always say your work is bigger than your name.

 

We struggled to survive. We are well known within the country, but in government side, we had a problem with Al-Shabaab. We had a problem. With a lot of community leaders, we had a problem. But my mom still was a peacemaker and solving issues and everything. But it put my life and my sister’s life and my mother’s life in danger for being on, growing that big and having well known internationally and nationally. And my mom was like, “Let’s focus on health care. Let’s focus what we’re good at. When you have a peace, you will carry that vision, I know.” And those children who grew up and those people who still live in the around the village and in a part of the village, they considered themselves Hawa Abdi Village, Hope Village, Mama Hawa’s children. She inspired a generation. The beauty she created for us is, those young children who are not young today, they’re in 30s, 40s. They respect a woman leader.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Right. What does Hope Village look like today? Nearly three years after your mom’s passing, what’s the current situation there?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

It’s not good. It became a war zone. So we saved most of the people. Al-Shabaab is the area, the government still have the fight with Al-Shabaab. It’s still not safe. We try to rebuild the border. And it didn’t work. Al-Shabaab refused. Still, they have part of the land where 400 families were in housing there. Al-Shabaab took away. So 400 family become homeless in one second. And until Al-Shabaab go away, that village is not functioning yet. Only the hospital and the school are functioning.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Are you able to go back? Are you able to visit the hospital and the school under the current circumstances?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

I do go very short time. But we try to be safe. We hire a lot of doctors. They work in there, the school is running by itself. We have another hospital in Mogadishu. We have some in Somaliland. So my sister is in Mogadishu and I’m in Somaliland, but we still oversee the village until the Shabaab go away. And it’s very sad for the last years of her life, building all this village and seeing it crumbling. And then my mom, she goes, again, it’s visionary. She said, you’re going to build better than what I do. I know that. But you have your life. You’re still young. Take care of your children, run other hospitals, focus on health care. Your health care is more safer. You’re woman, you’re doctor. No one will disturb you. When you try to create a system, that’s when you’re going to have a problem. Cause what we were– my mom is doing is she’s creating a state within the state.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

The vision is audacious.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

It is.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Tell us a little bit about the Hagarla Institute because it it feels like it’s something that’s evolving and growing and really, really vital and fascinating.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

That was the last piece I think we’re missing in the village. I know we’re all in the country, so we had the conversation. Hagarla, my mom named it. So I was like, Mom, I want to have this institute. We don’t have any articles. We don’t do any research. You know, the work she has done for the last 30 years, if we had proper documentation, we could write like a million articles on how she treated, how she saved, mental care, mental health care, you know, lack of medication. And still she tried to heal a lot and treated a lot of people. I wish we had a system in a place that recorded well. Because of the war, it was not possible. Because of the lack of finance, it was not possible to record the whole war she did.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Right.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

And Hagarla is coming in as an institute, trying to record, maybe even grow bigger, maybe in the future become a university. But for now is to record all that documentation, to understand we’re doing mobile clinic. That’s where my mom started. So we have two mobile clinics. We’re going to the village and understanding what is the need of health care because she started tailoring health care by community. So when she goes outside for a mobile clinic, different village, she understand that village needs and their common diseases. It’s not copy, cut, paste like NGOs international are doing. And that’s very unique way to look in healthcare. And that’s what Hagarla is doing. We visited over ten villages for now. We going back, we very closely working with four villages. We want to understand what is their needs. Can we train people locally? Can we inspire as a Hope Village people to take ownership on their health care. The role in Hagarla is to shift the policy. And to bring the policy in and to have a better health care system in Somalia where village is tailored. That’s taking my mom’s vision and making sure each village is independent.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Three years ago, Dr. Hawa died at the age of 73.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

It has been very difficult. The sad part is seeing her life work… Just a couple stupid guys is stopping. You know? That was the saddest part. It’s not only her death. I wish she could see her village more flourishing before she passed away. But it was even sad. We couldn’t even bury her there because that was her request. And we had to bury her other land in outside of Mogadishu. Because they refused. And the government could not do anything. And then you feel so hopeless. But the people we supported – keeping us a hope, giving us a hope, you know, they are the one who’s keeping hope alive. My mom kept her small village in peace for the last 30 years.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Mmm.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

When you see the character of my mom, I could see embedded in each Somali woman, because they’re very strong, they’re very committed. They take care. They die for their family, they take care of their children. They look the brighter side of their children. They love unconditionally for their community. My mom knew everyone in our village. You know, even when it’s 90,000 people, she know literally most of people by their name. And it’s like, who was this one? [laughs]

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

[laughs] It’s incredible. Deqo, you’ve talked about your own kids. How old are your kids?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

I have six of them – four teenagers and two toddlers.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Mashallah. That’s incredible. So, Deqo, you got to tell me. You were the daughter of your mother. You were forged and trained and shaped, right, in the heart of the heart of the struggle. And so I have to ask you. How do your kids see you, knowing how you saw your mom? And do you think your kids are going to follow in your footsteps, in their grandmother’s footsteps?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

Probably their grandmothers. My teenagers, they don’t know me as a mom. Because my mom supported me, just some three of them, my cousin – who died from cancer – children. So it was a community raised. So I don’t think my elderly one are belonging to me. They belong to Hawa Abdi community. [laughs] So yeah. It’s different and I hope I’m giving freedom. Whatever they want to do, I will not force them. And that really sometimes backfire me because my older daughter, she still didn’t decide. She keeps changing her major, she’s in Turkey. My two girls they still studying in the university and it’s like, I wish I was my mom. Because I’m agreeing with everything they come up with, teenagers. And it’s like, oh my God, I wish I could have my mom’s character and say, no, you becoming this and you’re finishing. And that will help you because you set goal. And now we have plan A, plan B. Now I don’t know where we ended up. P, Q, R, S, T, I think end of alphabet. It’s very hard, it’s very hard to raise your kids. And I’m so happy my mom was with me. They really grew up in our household and my mom raised them while I’m traveling, I’m doing this and that. And they will be different. They have freedom. So my teenager son, where I adopted, he was ten years old, who is child soldier. And it was difficult for him to go to school. So I tried, I pushed, I pushed and I let it go. And he went to some technical and he’s good in training. So he go into the business. He get married, I’m grandmother. I have now two grandchildren.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

That’s amazing Deqo.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

He is 20 and he has two kids. So I let him go and my mom’s like, you spoil him. I say, Mom, I cannot force him. This kid, he lost his parents when he was three and someone raised him and he joined Al-Shabaab, the military. And at the age of ten, he knew all kinds of military weapon. And to shame that kid and force him to graduate. And it’s like, no, I’m not. I tried to support him in the beginning before I adopted because I had daughters in the house. I was afraid to bring in this child soldier with my little girls and it’s like, I found someone to take care of him. And I was in pain. And he was going back to the military. And my husband’s like, he needs home, doesn’t need your money. And that’s very important. Bringing him home and making him part of our home, it transformed him as a human being. He become a better human being.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Deqo, every time I speak to you and we have a chance to meet, I learn something more and I won’t lie to you. I’m in awe. Mashallah. Everything that you do to carry your mother’s legacy, to do this work of creating knowledge and understanding. And then six kids on top of that and two grandchildren. Where do you draw the energy? Where do you draw the spiritual support to make all this amazing work happen?

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

I don’t see it that way. I’m just like, part of my life, it’s what I do. When you put it that way… it’s life happens. And when in this city, I’m in Burao, where my actually, my grandfather is from here in Somaliland. And when I opened the clinic before I went to the Umrah, it has a spiritual connection and I had an old elderly woman who was sick for so long but she was very shy by culture. She couldn’t talk to the male doctors – her UTI, her problem. She had a uterine prolapse, so she had 14 kids. Her uterus was literally outside. She was carrying this, her uterus outside with all the pain for over ten years because she was shy to show a man. And seeing her and we did the operation, we did hysterectomy. And the way she cried, the way she said, “If you are not a woman, I will die. I will have this problem rest of my life”. She was in her mid 70s. That inspires me. Just to be a woman and give an opportunity to her to speak. We help her to transform her life. And when you see a patient like that, it’s inspiring. It moves you. So that’s the country and that’s what inspires me, really. My patient, my son, and my mom.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Tell us about a joy or a meanness that came to you as an unexpected visitor.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

It was going to Umrah and Hajj. I’m going into Medina and Mecca. And I love history and I hear so much sīrah, where I was a child in a candy store when I was in Medina. It’s like, “Oh, this is, this is where they went, this is what..” I was jumping, I was reading, I was excited and all the group I was with are like, “What’s wrong with you?” And it’s like, “I’m walking where this walked. I’m walking where Umar Ibn Al-Khattab. I was like, so enjoy. And everyone was laughing. Ten days we were in Medina, I couldn’t even sleep for excitement. Because I was living in history.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Dr. Deqo Mohamed. You are an inspiration. Thank you so much for being with me on This Being Human.

 

DEQO MOHAMED:

Thank you so much for making me human.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Thank you for listening to This Being Human. Look in the show notes for links to learn more about Dr. Deqo Mohamed’s work.

 

This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Hailey Choi. Our executive producer is Laura Regehr. Stuart Coxe is the president of Antica Productions.

 

Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Our associate audio editor is Cameron McIver. Original music by Boombox Sound.

 

Shaghayegh Tajvidi is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.

 

This Being Human is generously supported by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures.

 

The Museum wishes to thank The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation for their generous support of This Being Human.